Introduction to Film/Media Studies Spring 2016

Monday, January 25 at 7pm

GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Directed by Wes Anderson (U.S. 2014) 100 min. DCP. With Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Jude Law, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Adrian Brody, Tom Wilkinson, Jason Schwartzman, Jeff Goldblum.
Admired for his meticulously designed cinematic confections, Wes Anderson is among a small handful of contemporary American Hollywood directors whose name is known and esteemed by the 18-49 demographic. His latest creation, for which he assembled an all-star cast, depicts the adventures of a legendary concierge working at a famous European hotel between the wars, and the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.

TOUCH OF EVIL

A bomb rolls into a small, seedy border town in one of cinema’s most astounding opening shots. The ensuing thriller – Welles’ monstrously corrupt detective investigates with the help of a Mexican narc (Heston) recently wed to Janet Leigh – is the stuff of a deliriously grotesque noir nightmare. “The tallest tree in the wilderness of Welles’ post-Kane career! The dialogue is as intricately overlapped as the lighting is cross-hatched; the cameos are as vivid as possible in a black-and-white movie; the camera work and blocking have the coordination of an Olympic pole vaulter.” – J. Hoberman.

BARAKA

Ron Fricke (U.S. 1992) 96 min.

After working as cinematographer on Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, Fricke reportedly spent five years devising his own “non-verbal” feature documentary. Photographed on 70mm in over 20 countries, Baraka is a journey of interconnection and transcendence that “plunges into nature, into history, into the human spirit and finally into the realm of the infinite” (Fricke).

UPSTREAM COLOR

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. As they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of their wrecked lives, identity becomes an illusion. Romantic, intense, boldly (some might say willfully) opaque, and driven by philosophical curiosity about humanity’s mysterious biological connections, Upstream Color is “a deeply sincere, elliptical movie about being and nature, men and women, self and other” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times).

SUNSET BOULEVARD

One of Billy Wilder’s most enduring masterpieces is a glittering poison-pen letter to all things Hollywood, told in flashback by a screenwriter whose final job is playing paid companion to aging silent-film goddess Norma Desmond (Swanson).

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD

Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks (U.S. 1951) 87 min. 35MM. With Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness.
Before John Carpenter truncated its title for his remake three decades later, The Thing from Another World made 1950s audiences scream with the sci-fi horror tale of an alien in the Arctic. When the Air Force is called in to aid a crew of scientists who have found a crashed UFO near their remote North Pole outpost, no one is quite sure whether the discovery will advance or destroy life as we know it. Howard Hawks’ uncredited codirection elevates this would-be B-movie to exemplar of the American auteur’s genre spanning oeuvre.

THE 400 BLOWS

François Truffaut (France 1959) 99 min. 35 MM. With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy. French with English subtitles.
François Truffaut’s first feature is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of the director’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Léaud), The 400 Blows sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime. The film marked Truffaut’s passage from leading critic to trailblazing auteur of the French New Wave. This screening is presented in conjunction with Professor Nathalie Dupont’s Introduction to French Cinema course.

CITIZEN KANE

Orson Welles (U.S. 1941) 119 min. DCP. With Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Comingmore.
Following the death of a publishing tycoon, reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland use chiaroscuro lighting, deep-focus cinematography and a labyrinthine flashback structure to imagine the monstrous hollowness of the American dream. A modernist landmark of cinematic style and storytelling.

EARLY CINEMA PROGRAM

Professor Eric Faden will give a multimedia presentation on early cinema featuring shorts by Lumière, Porter and a restored 35MM print of A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, France,1902).TOP OF PAGE

Monday, April 11 at 7pm

REBECCA

Alfred Hitchcock (U.S. 1940) 130 min. With Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders.
Hitchcock’s first American film adapts Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling fable of a young bride whose marriage is haunted by the spirit of her husband’s first wife. The labyrinthine Manderly mansion where her brooding groom takes her, presided over by his menacing housekeeper, sets the stage for a Gothic ghost story-cum-psychological thriller.

MY WINNIPEG

Guy Maddin (Canada 2007) 80 min. With Darcy Fehr, Ann Savage, Amy Stewart, Louis Negin.
Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in an attempt to answer that question in this hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. A documentary (or “docu-fantasia” as Maddin proclaims) that inventively blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths, My Winnipeg is Maddin’s most personal film and a truly unique cinematic experience.

MOMMY

Xavier Dolan (Canada 2014) 139 min. DCP. With Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement, Antoine-Olivier Pilon.
Québécois wunderkind Xavier Dolan (at age 25 he’s already made five prizewinning features). weaves the story of a passionate widowed single mom (Dorval) who finds herself burdened with the full-time custody of her volatile 15-year-old hellraiser son (Pilon). As they struggle to make ends meet, the peculiar new neighbor across the street offers her help. Daringly shot in a 1:1 ratio that mimics the aesthetics of Instagram, Mommy was the co-winner of the prestigious Jury Prize at Cannes.